Sediment Yield Estimation and Soil Conservation Measures for Agrani River Basin Using Geospatial Techniques

Abstract

Sedimentationreduces the capacity of the reservoir and it is the important concern for watershed management. This paper presentsthe computation of sediment yield of Agrani River basin of Sangli and Belgavi districts in Maharashtra and Karnataka, India using RS and GIS techniques. The land use/land cover (LULC) map of the study area was prepared by supervised classification using satellite imagery of IRS P6 LISS III and ERDAS-imagine v9.1 image processing software. 26.67% of the area is occupied by agricultural land, 20.37% area covers forest land, 27.06% area of fallow land. Meteorological parameters such as average annual rainfall and mean annual temperature are then used to calculate amount of sediment yield in the reservoir. Garde model was used for determination of annual sediment yield. Mean annual runoff and sediment yield for investigating area is19.30 million m3 and 0.0897 million m3/year, respectively. With very fine drainage texture, drainage density in the study area is1.88 km/km2.